There are a variety of different applications that can use voltage regulation circuits including, but not limited to, programmable integrated circuits, programmable logic devices (PLDs), and System on Chip (SoC) devices. Some SoC devices can include programmable logic that is similar to programmable logic provided by various PLDs. PLDs are a type of programmable integrated circuit (IC) that can be programmed to perform specified logic functions. One type of PLD, the field programmable gate array (FPGA), can include an array of programmable tiles. These programmable tiles comprise various types of logic blocks, which can include, for example, input/output blocks (IOBs), configurable logic blocks (CLBs), dedicated random access memory blocks (BRAM), multipliers, digital signal processing blocks (DSPs), processors, clock managers, delay locked loops (DLLs), bus or network interfaces such as Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI), PCI Express (PCIe) and Ethernet, and so forth. Some PLDs include enough components and functionality to effectively serve as an entire computer system on a single IC chip. Devices with such functionality are sometimes referred to as SoCs.
The power requirements of ICs, such as FPGAs and SoCs, can be difficult to meet as the size and speed of the devices increase. For example, a system designer who is using an FPGA in a design needs to satisfy the power requirements of the FPGA within the overall system. Satisfying power requirements of a system design can be complicated when the FPGA requires multiple different supply voltages for different purposes. Differences between the supply voltages may include recommended operating conditions, different amounts of current and other characteristics. Moving at least some of the regulation internal to the IC can be accomplished using integrated voltage regulator circuit, which provides an internal supply voltage to the IC. A side effect is a change to the potential threats relating to side-channel attacks that might compromise the security of the IC.
These and other problems can be problematic for ICs with one or more integrated voltage regulator circuits.